


Solitude

by afishoutofwater (orphan_account)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Sci-Fi AU, death mention, emetophobics beware there is brief mention of vomiting, kidnapping happens, needles mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:26:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10079423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/afishoutofwater
Summary: in which eren, mikasa, and armin are orphans trapped in a nightmare.





	

**Author's Note:**

> oooh boy, mentions of kidnap and death, needles, um some vomiting later on, uh this isn’t a very pleasant story but it’s inspired by one of my ALL TIME favourite sci-fi stories, the child garden by geoff ryman and i absolutely recommend it because the main character is a lesbian and she has an intimate relationship with another woman and it’s so great and really sad but so good!
> 
> this was a prompt request from godtier1 on tumblr who requested armin being taken for experimentation and eren rescuing him.

It happens discreetly, a few people taken from the streets in blacked out vans, men wearing white lab-coats and dark glasses over their faces, emerging from inside and grabbing hold of people with force. They press silk handkerchiefs over struggling mouths and whisper sweet, poisoned hushes into ears as they collapse under the spell. The people are then shoved inside the van and it drives off in a cloud of violent purple smoke to an underground establishment.

It happens inconspicuously, just a few people at first, before the homeless and poor are being picked off one by one at an alarming rate. It’s simply rumours to Armin’s ears but Eren’s actually seen it happen with his own eyes.

Hannes was a close friend of Eren’s and had been a supporting figure ever since his mother had died and his father had disappeared. Hannes would make sure Eren had enough to eat and a safe place to sleep inside an abandoned, bordered up, old house. He’d seen Hannes get picked off with his own eyes, yelling at Eren to _run and hide_.

The men in lab-coats split off and some begin to chase Eren through the streets of Shiganshina. He might have been scrawny and only fifteen but he knows the back streets like his own home – because it _is_ his home – and knows exactly where the obstacles lie for his advantage.

He tips over trash cans and wooden crates and a few lab-coated men trip over and curse at him. They yell awful obscenities at the teenager as he ducks down a sewer drain to hide before making his way back to the bordered house where Armin and Mikasa were hiding away.

“Hannes,” he coughs out as he collapses to the floor.

“Eren!” Armin cries out and races over to him from the pile of tattered books. Mikasa follows, wordlessly. “Eren, are you okay?” He pulls Eren up to his lap and brushes aside a few stray hairs from Eren’s face.

“Hannes,” he chokes out again. “Hannes got captured. He’s gone. Gone.”

“Gone?” Mikasa echoes. “What do you mean he got captured?”

“Those people… In lab-coats. Grabbed him. Took him!”

Yes, it had only been floating rumours to Armin’s inquisitive ears but Eren had seen the horror first hand and became incredibly protective over his adopted sister and his best friend. The three stay to themselves and only go out at night when they’re certain that the people in lab-coats won’t appear – “I mean, I’ve observed the incidents and they only happen during the day,” Armin surmises.

And, Eren trusts Armin. He trusts Armin with his whole being.

They’re left to defend for themselves with Hannes gone and the small communities of the poor and homeless were beginning to diverge, worrying about protecting themselves and the ones closest to them, just like Eren.

After a few months of terror, the incidents begin to die down and Eren starts to think that maybe the horror is over.

Until, that is, Armin gets captured two years later.

The three had split off to find some food for the next couple of days by scourging through the waste of nearby restaurants and Armin had gone off to the small dump at the edge of town to grab any discarded books. (“It’s hopeless, though,” Armin muttered after the second time he visited, throwing down the small number of books he picked up. “I’m only finding Oscar Wilde and D.H. Lawrence… It’s almost as if there’s a book ban going on.”)

Eren then hears Armin scream from a mile away and he races towards the source, telling Mikasa to head back to the hideout immediately with what little food they had gathered. He runs through the streets, over discarded boxes and rubbish bins.

He gets there in enough time to see Armin shoved inside the van, screaming Eren’s name in distress. The initial adrenaline begins to wear off and Eren hides inside a phone booth, watching in pain as the van drives off with his best friend trapped inside.

He pounds against the glass of the phone booth, screaming out as the van disappears behind the veil of purple smoke. First Hannes, now Armin, and now Eren’s world was falling apart. Why were they doing this? Why were they destroying people’s lives like this!?

He returns to the house weary and exhausted. Mikasa asks after Armin but all Eren can do is give a pitiful shrug of his shoulders before collapsing and succumbing to his exhaustion.

* * *

Drowning, Armin feels like he’s drowning when he finally comes to, strapped to a metal table with leather digging into his wrists, ankles, and abdomen. He can smell bleach, it stings his nose when he breathes in deeply in panic, and he can smell the rusty residue of dried blood. His mouth tastes like coppery iron and his tongue is fat against the roof of his mouth. He can barely breathe in, let alone speak, and his eyes are finally coming to the bright white light watching over him and the grimy metal walls around him.

He can hear footsteps to the left of him and he immediately whips his head to face towards the sound, he begins to feel dizzy almost immediately and his eyes roll back into his head before he passes out.

Except, he cannot succumb completely out of consciousness and it’s probably to do with the pure oxygen being pumped into his system when one of the lab-coat wearers inserts a cannula into his nostrils.

He sees, blearily, a large syringe rise up from his right and another lab-coat wearer, this one having a mint coloured surgical mask covering 50% of his manic features, hovers it over Armin’s right arm. Armin feels the sting of the needle hit his skin but he doesn’t feel the pain of the insertion nor does he feel the concoction being pressed deep into his veins. His vision clouds for a brief second before coming clearer than before.

“Are you awake?” One of the lab-coats asks and Armin stares at him with wide-eyed fury and panic. “Are you awake?” he gets asked again and Armin nods his head once, the bitter sting of tears as they begin to cloud his vision once more. “Excellent. Your name is Armin Arlert, correct?”

Armin, again, nods, and a stray tear rolls down to his ear.

“Can you speak?”

Armin shakes his head once, whimpering slightly when he feels the bruising from his kidnapper’s brutality.

“We may need to put him under for a few more hours and see how he is then,” the lab-coat to his right says to the man on his left. The other man agrees before removing the cannula transporting oxygen before inserting another that pumps another type of gas that Armin can’t quite pin down before his world turns white and then completely black.

* * *

“Eren, you can’t do this,” Mikasa tries to reason as Eren begins to suit up. He slides knives into any available pocket space and even hoists a gun under his stolen, tattered, leather jacket.

“If I don’t, who will?”

Mikasa nibbles on her lower lip.

“Armin is in danger, Mikasa. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Of course it does. But, what’s your plan? Are you just gonna barge in without thinking this through?”

Eren stops with his fifth knife and it clatters to the ground with a shallow ring when he drops it. “Plan? Mikasa, the _plan_ is to save Armin.”

“What are you going to do if you captured yourself?”

“Bust out, obviously.”

Mikasa shakes her head, Eren was never so obtuse when it came to safety… Except, when it came to Armin, and then all reason and common sense just flew out of his head.

“You can’t do this… At least, not alone.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Mikasa, no way! It’s dangerous!-“

“When your mother died, she asked me to keep you safe, Eren!” Mikasa shouted, clutching her pseudo-brother’s arms. “I’m keeping my end of the deal, okay? I’m coming with you. Now, give me that gun.”

Eren hands over the revolver hastily and recoils when Mikasa snatches it from him a little too eagerly. “Damn, you’re scary sometimes.”

Mikasa smiles sardonically. “Good, that means you won’t cross me next time.”

The two make a plan to wait until dawn, when the vans will emerge to begin their ritual cleansing, as Armin had called it, and whilst the men in lab-coats were busy, they were to lead two off on their own.

“We knock them out and take their coats and ID badges and everything,” Mikasa finalises. “When we get inside, we’ll need to work quickly or we’ll be discovered.”

It is definitely as easy as Mikasa had said, Eren discovers as two men groan at their feet. They pick off the essentials, wrapping themselves in lab-coats, and sliding on sunglasses. They loop the ID badges over their necks and nod once they complete their tasks.

They quickly make their way back to one of the vans and burst in. One of the other lab-coats seems surprised by their entrance but nods in acknowledgement when he sees the ID badges swinging from their necks. On the floor of the van are two young girls, gagged and bound.

Eren’s blood pressure begins to rise, he feels a roar in his ears as anger fills him internally but he takes a quick look at Mikasa who is watching him carefully and he begins to simmer back down. Armin was priority, with Armin safe they could free any other innocent victims.

The van begins to drive off towards their destinations and it soon dawns on Eren that he could die today, and his stomach begins to flip, sickness rising in his throat.

* * *

Armin’s in a pod when he wakes up the second time and all he can see is green glass. He can breathe naturally this time and his mouth doesn’t feel as bloody or swollen. There’s a man staring at him through the glass and it leaves a cold chill over Armin’s body.

“He’s awake.”

It comes muffled through the pod door but Armin can hear each exact word with ease. He sees another lab-coat approach his pod with a clipboard and enters a few digits into the keypad on the door.

It opens with a gas pressure release and Armin fully expects to tumble out but he’s kept hold by cables and wires. The lab-coat then presses another set of numbers and Armin then falls out of the pod and into the other man’s arms.

“Armin Arlert, grandson of Dr Claus Arlert?”

“H-how do you…”

The lab-coat ceases Armin’s question with a hand gesture, cutting across thin air before raising the clipboard. “Standard procedure. Give me the exact date of King Charles I’s execution.”

“January 30th, 1649,” Armin answers immediately. The lab-coat smirks and Armin blinks in bewilderment.

“ _And I, forsooth, in love!_...”

“ _I, that have been love’s whip, a very beadle to a humorous sigh, a critic, nay, a night-watch constable, a domineering pedant o’er the boy, than whom so mortal so magnificent_.”

“What is the square root of 175,694?”

“419.16.”

“And finally, the atomic number of Lawrencium.”

“103,” Armin answers again, mechanically and automatically. He’s on his feet at this point, having regained his strength after being knocked out for so long.

“It’s worked,” the man who had been holding him up says with a victorious grin.

“Indeed it has. Armin, your grandfather was a pioneer of intelligence. He created a virus so powerful that you become immune to any disease and with it, the side effects being unmeasurable intelligence.”

“I-I don’t understand?”

“Yes, you do, you are the host of this virus. None of the other subjects worked and succumbed to the virus, dying almost immediately. You are the first to host this virus without any irredeemable side effects.”

“My grandfather did this? My grandfather wouldn’t have wanted this.”

“What on Earth are you talking about? Of course he would’ve! He was creating the cure for cancer and discovered this! This virus, which shall now be known as _AA1G_.”

“No, my grandfather created this virus but he never wanted this to happen. He never wanted it to reach public domain, he was adamant about that, I’m certain.”

The two lab-coats share a glance between them and then scowl threateningly. “You harbour more intelligence than anyone in the world and you are _defying_ us?” The one with the clipboard accused.

“I’m defying your morality and I’m telling you, my grandfather wanted this virus to die with him!”

“How can you be so certain?”

When he looks up through his blond hair, Armin can see shadows of more lab-coated men in the distance and he begins to panic, knowing his time is nearly up, they won’t let a free-thinker run with the amount of power that he holds at the moment, not only is he unable to die from any disease, he holds information from galaxies away.

Armin begins to back up into the pod as the shadows draw nearer and the two lab-coats in front of him grunt with pained expressions before collapsing to the floor, knives sticking from their backs. Armin looks up, wanting to scream but his panic dies down when he notices the unruly brunette hair of his best friend.

Eren lowers the sunglasses on his face and winks one icy-grey eye at Armin.

“We got you, bud.”

And just like that, Armin faints one more time.

* * *

 

Alarms begin to sound just as Eren and Mikasa are about to make it out of the facility and soon the thudding footsteps of armed guards are surrounding them. With nowhere but down to go, Eren ducks into a waste pipe, Armin clinging to his back, and Mikasa follows suit, shooting a few bullets into the Kevlar vests of the guards.

The three slide down the shoot, knowing that it empties into the creek not too far from their boarded sanctuary. Armin mumbles against Eren’s ear and the brunet holds him a little tighter, he can feel the blond’s heart beat against his back and the sense of relief swelled up in his chest, Armin is alive. Armin is okay, Armin is safe, and _Armin. Is._ _Alive_.

They fall into the creek, Armin floating away from Eren as the other braces himself on impact.

“Armin!” Eren screams out, the distant blaring of alarms taunting them that safety was still only just in grasp. “Armin!” He cries out continuously, ducking under the murky water to see if he could find the blond.

“Armin!” Mikasa joins in, swimming around, hoping to see a tuft of blond hair poke above the surface.

There’s coughing and spluttering when Armin emerges, breaking through the surface and Eren swims over to him immediately, holding his face in his hands.

“Armin!” Eren exclaims, breathlessly. Armin glances at Eren with bright blue eyes and smile sleepily.

“Eren, boy, am I glad to see your stupidly handsome face.”

Eren grins cheekily before enveloping Armin into a brief hug. “We gotta go.”

The three make their way to the surface and run as fast as their legs can carry them. There are questions hanging amongst them, unanswered and implored. Armin trips up over a raised tree root and lands against the ground with a heavy thud.

Eren turns back and retreats towards his friend. “We’ll be safe for a little while. Let’s stop here.”

Mikasa follows after him and sits heavily against the ground. She then sheds the lab-coat that’s weighing her down and flings off the ID badge into a tree hollow. She gestures for Eren to do the same.

“W-what happened back there?” Armin then asks, leaning against an oak tree trunk.

“That’s what I want to know!” Eren then exclaims, leaning forward and pressing a hand against Armin’s forehead. “What did they do to you?”

“… I really don’t want to talk about this right now…” He looks into Eren’s grey eyes and smiles pitifully. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“Same here,” Eren replies and he’s smiling so gently now and Armin thinks it’s the prettiest Eren’s ever looked.

“So, why were you in lab-coats?”

“Well…”

“When you were captured, Eren wanted to play hero so he began to arm himself with all sorts of weapons,” Mikasa informs the blond.

“Typical,” Armin says, laughing a little when Eren pouts.

“I couldn’t let them take you away… You’re everything to me…” He explains.

Mikasa clears her throat loudly before continuing. “I couldn’t let him go on his own so I tagged along and we devised a plan. We knocked out a couple of those men in lab-coats and took their stuff and we hitched a right to that weird establishment.”

Big black doors had opened with sweeping gestures, armed guards nodding as a respect for their return. The vans drove down into an underground parking lot in formation, one after another.

The back doors of the vans swung open and two men in lab-coats with surgical masks over their faces removed the tied up victims and placed them on trolleys to transport them to another part of the facility. The vans then carried on down into the parking lot where the lab-coated men inside left, Mikasa and Eren following as accurately as they could, and began to make their way inside.

One of the men moved forward and swung an arm around the man who had been riding with the two teenagers. “Peters, don’t forget you owe me a beer tonight.”

The man responds with a crooked smile. “I’ll see what the missus says.”

The two men travel down a different path, all of the men splitting off down various corridors and Eren and Mikasa were left vying for an option in the dead centre.

“You lost?” One of the lab-coats asked, looking at Eren and Mikasa’s faces before taking a glimpse at their ID badges.

“Nope!” Mikasa replied swiftly and led Eren down a long corridor to their right. And thankfully, that was exactly where they needed to go as the corridor opened up in giant windows to a floor that looked like it had jumped straight out of a horror movie. Blood splattered the floor and there were several rusting metal tables, undone leather straps at the sides, along with small tables containing several surgical tools. Along the wall there were green-glass pods, housing sleeping bodies. “Eren, look!”

And there he was, Armin resting in the first pod on the left, one of the lab-coats watching him with such intensity it made Eren shiver uncomfortably.

“Excuse me, how do we get down there?” Eren asked one of the men passing by.

“You take a right down this corridor and it leads you to the elevator, of course?” The man replied automatically with a befuddled frown. He then walked away, shooting Eren and Mikasa strange glances until he disappeared around the corner.

Eren and Mikasa followed the man’s instructions, sliding their ID badges through the keypad to allow them access. The elevator doors swung open grandly for them and they stepped inside, Eren swaying on the balls of his feet, eager to get into action…

“And then,” Eren adds, finishing the story. “We killed those assholes and saved you!”

Armin smiles wearily. “I guess it’s my turn now, isn’t it?”

Eren gulps and takes hold of Armin’s hand. “It’ll be okay, Armin.”

And so, Armin opens up, about the experimentation, about his grandfather’s dark and sordid past, about how the underground lab were using the poor and homeless as guinea pigs for an omnipotent cure for cancer, and how Armin had been the only one out of thousands of people to actually make it out alive.

Eren feels sick by the end and he ventures off deep into the woods to bring up the food he had eaten last night. He chokes and coughs and splutters bile before returning back to the group.

“They’re all dead,” he whispers in defeat. “Those two girls, Mikasa… They’re dead-men walking.”

Mikasa is sullen and she stares at the decaying leaves on the ground. There’s heavy silence between the trio for a long time.

“We have to start a revolution,” Armin then says. “I can’t let my grandfather’s hard work be slandered like this.”

“What can we do, Armin, we’re teenagers,” Eren says. “We have nothing.”

“We have intelligence,” Armin reminds his friends, tapping his temple gently. “I have a vast knowledge of everything in this universe… We can do this; history has proved us right so many times.”

Eren is weary to answer as the three returns to their boarded sanctuary, allowing Armin to rest his tired body, soul, and mind. Mikasa is wordless when she and her adoptive brother stare out over the city from a broken window, purple smog covering the crooked houses and tall government buildings.

Right now, they are tipping on the edge between adolescence and adulthood, armed with the vast knowledge locked within Armin’s mind. The dawn of a new era begins with a revolution and just beyond the horizon Eren can see a moment in history there in their reach to seize.


End file.
